Obligation - The Analysis And Justification Of Obligations, Legal And Moral Obligations, Obligations, Roles, And Identities

philosophers issues dialogue obey

Since Plato wrote of political obligation in his dialogue Crito, obligation in general has been of ongoing interest to philosophers. In that dialogue, Socrates argues that he was under an obligation to obey the laws of Athens and comply with a sentence of death. During the course of the argument, he raises and offers solutions to many of the central issues about obligation that philosophers still puzzle over. For instance, how can obligations have the grip on us that they do—in some cases, so that we are willing to die rather than not fulfill them? What is the nature and justification of moral and legal obligations? Do we have an obligation to obey the state, and if so, why?

The range of issues and positions relating to obligation is vast, given that there are few areas of moral and political philosophy in which obligation does not play a role. In what follows, four topics that have been of particular interest to contemporary philosophers are discussed: (1) the analysis and justification of obligations; (2) legal and moral obligations; (3) obligations, roles, and identities; and (4) agent-relative obligations.

Additional Topics

Obligation is normative, concerned with how things should be (not necessarily with how they are). In particular, it is a deontically normative—concerned with duty, or what is permissible, forbidden, and the like—as opposed to axiologically normative, concerned with what is good, bad, better, or worse. A given deontic normative perspective classifies actions, laws, institutions, or wh…

The two most salient deontic realms are law and morality. But how are legal and moral obligations related? Positivism is the doctrine that our legal and moral obligations are quite distinct, that what the law is is a separate issue from what it ought to be. In the form originally propounded by Jeremy Bentham and Austin, legal obligations are generated by commands of the sovereign, or that entity w…

The problem of political obligation is the problem of establishing an obligation within the moral deontic realm regarding the legal deontic realm—a moral obligation to obey the law, for instance. Many offer the voluntarist account, that the moral obligation is based on what is in effect a promise. Others think that moral obligations, and a fortiori political obligation, are all tied to prom…

Much debate in late twentieth-century moral philosophy has been over how deep the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral obligations goes and whether the existence of agent-relative obligations is compatible with utilitarian moral theories. Recall that agent-relative obligations seem to have a special attachment to the person whom they bind. This is particularly the case regarding mo…

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